M: "Did your CPR teacher tell you to do that every time I choke? Because if so, she owes you your $300 back."

J: "I haven't been to baby CPR class yet."

M: "Jesus Creamed Crikey, why am I still surprised by this shit after a week. I swear, Dad, if I could walk away from you right now, and make a show of cursing you to hell under my breath, I would do it, Dad. I really would."

J: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We were planning to go, but then you came out almost four weeks early, and we didn't have a damn thing ready to go out. And then you got diagnosed with the Billy Rubin and we had to put you on that damn phototherapy blanket."

M: "And what a clumsy out-of-character bit of expository dialogue that was."

J: "I don't care. Major props to the makers of The Wallaby II BiliBlanket. They make a great product, which has brought your Billy rating down from 18 to 14 in a few days. God bless them, the soft blue light of their blanket, and the exceptionally professional deliveryman from Arcadian Healthcare."

M: "So ... this is a temporary thing? My linens will not in fact glow aquamarine forever? When I go to my senior prom, it will not look like I'm hiding one of the Elftstones of Shannara in my vagina?"

J: "I mean, it won't be a must. But for all I know, incandescent underpants aglow may be all over MTV come 2026."

M: "Good."

J: "Though I'm glad you're down with using the word 'v-"

M: "Notyourword!"

J: "... I know it's not a natural conversation piece, but I've used it at least twice a day this week since you were born. Half of my questions to the nurses, and all the tiskings they gave me, were about treatment of your-"

J: "... looking?' from the other room. The neighbors have to be sick of it."

M: "Dad! That is not ever your word!"

J: [Oblivious.] "I mean, you weigh under six pounds. Me taking a babywipe to you is like taking a streetsweeper to-"

M: "Dad!"

J: [Looks down.]

M: "You are nothing like the guy mom described last night."

J: [Shrugs.]

M: "How in the hell did you end up bagging her?"

J: "Through sheer jackassery. I survived from one date to the next by stringing together story after story about every idiotic thing I've ever done. Like, remember on Saturday morning around 3, when I sat on mom's petite rocking chair while holding you and the thing shattered under us?"

M: "Well, that was awesome. It happened in like slow motion. You were all drowsy-faced, and then your eyes went all panicky, and then you just kind of made a muffled, girls cry as that broken wood dug into your thigh."

J: "More importantly, you stopped screaming. You were the angriest muffin in the bakery until that happened."

M: "Well, it was funny."

J: [Thumbs up.]

M: "OK, I think I see it. I guess. Although, honestly, I thought mom could do better than Bernie Laplante."

J: "Woulda, coulda, shoulda, Bug."

M: "While it's clear that, when left to your own neuroses, you are a pinch-first-make-intelligent-inquiries-later twit who walks around Prospect Park talking vagina with the hump in the front of your coat ..."

J: [Smiles, thumbs up.]

M: "... it also seems that, if you and I go tumbling, you will at least shield my face with your ass. In that, you seem to have at least the same fatheryl instincts god granted the average Rwandan ape."